Flynn was set up by the FBI and prosecuted by the Special Counsel for a perjury trap.
What Barr fails to mention, and it is in the transcripts released yesterday, is that the DOJ and Intel community set him up with the Trump administration also.
Trump fired Flynn after these same bad actors came to the White House and said “Pence lied on a Sunday News show appearance” because your DNI said something different on a transcript (that was leaked). This was part of the set-up. “They” drove a wedge and Spicer unwittingly reinforced it and the media had it, DOJ told White House Counsel that Flynn was under investigation, and we had the first manufactured media scandal of the Trump administration.
Read the transcript of Sally Yates that was released yesterday. DOJ, FBI, and the intel community played a game of “gotcha” based on statements by Pence, used criminal leaks to push it all to the media, played the same game with Spicer, and the new administration and Chief of Staff were dealing with the first scandal. The acting AG comes to you and says your DNI contradicted your VP and Press Secretary on a call with the Russian Ambassador and by the way, he is under investigation.....
It was a new administration and they had no reason to suspect that the “professionals” would play the dirtiest trick in US history. They were caught flat-footed and it has been dirty games every since. It takes awhile for every administration to find their footing and speak with one voice, but they pushed a story of confusion within the Trump administration (Comey’s statement about disorganization make more sense now?) and put the credibility of Pence/Spicer against the credibility of Flynn who “wink wink, nod nod, was under investigation.”
Trump acted to protect his administration from this unexpected twist and the credibility of Pence. In hindsight, I bet he wishes he had not, but even he has admitted to being naive’ about how dirty the game in DC was.
Remember the note, “we prosecute him or get him fired.” They got him fired. The prosecution did not happen until the Special Counsel began their persecution.
Comey confirmed this. The FBI notes confirmed this. Sally Yates transcript confirms this. Yates went and set the hook for Flynn to be fired in the same fashion that Comey briefed the President about the dossier to create the hook for CNN/Buzzfeed to run with the leak in the news. The leak was already made that what Pence said contradicted Flynn and they reinforced it by asking Spicer a “gotcha” question to further the narrative.
Think about it and you will see it makes sense. They ran this playbook for the intended result.
Excellent point. Despite all their best efforts Including all the witetaps, the testimony released yesterday revealed that all the coup plotters really had legally in their hand was a falsified 302 against Flynn. Once that was leveraged to get Flynn fired, blood was in the water and the media went into a frenzy. Sessions should have come in and taken control of the situation as the new AG the DOJ they all worked for.
Instead, Sessions succumbed to career DOJ officials, against Trump’s requests, that ended up in the special counsel appointment which was a bonafide of the ninth degree investigation with no limits of Trump, instead of the perpetrators. Was Sessions bribed, complicit, or simply ignorant is one of the last remaining stones to overturn.